New Edelweiss E-galleys (4/11/22)

Hello e-galley readers! Check out some of the exciting e-galleys that were recently added to Edelweiss for your downloading pleasure:

SECRET CITY: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by James Kirchick
ISBN 9781627792325 | on sale 5/31/22

For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” held enormous, terrifying power.

Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, SECRET CITY is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,” James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II–era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a “homosexual ring” controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory.

Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, SECRET CITY will forever transform our understanding of American history.

THE HOLLOW KIND by Andy Davidson
ISBN 9780374538569 | on sale 10/11/22

Nellie Gardner is looking for a way out of an abusive marriage when she learns that her long-lost grandfather, August Redfern, has willed her his turpentine estate. She throws everything she can think of in a bag and flees to Georgia with her eleven-year-old son, Max, in tow.

It turns out that the “estate” is a decrepit farmhouse on a thousand acres of old pine forest, but Nellie is thrilled about the chance for a fresh start for her and Max, and a chance for the happy home she never had. So it takes her a while to notice the strange scratching in the walls, the faint whispering at night, how the forest is eerily quiet. But Max sees what his mother can’t: They’re no safer here than they had been in South Carolina. In fact, things might even be worse. There’s something wrong with Redfern Hill. Something lurks beneath the soil, ancient and hungry, with the power to corrupt hearts and destroy souls. It is the true legacy of Redfern Hill: a kingdom of grief and death, to which Nellie’s own blood has granted her the key.

From the author of THE BOATMAN’S DAUGHTER, THE HOLLOW KIND is a jaw-dropping novel about legacy and the horrors that hide in the dark corners of family history. Andy Davidson’s gorgeous, Gothic fable tracing the spectacular fall of the Redfern family will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

TOAD by Katherine Dunn
ISBN 9780374602321 | on sale 11/1/22

Sally Gunnar has been in love, has been mad, has been an agent of destruction, has been spurned; and now she has retreated from the world. She lives in isolation in her small house, where her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. From her comfortable perch, she broods over her deepest regrets: her wayward, weed-hazy college days; her blighted romance with a scornful poet; a tragically comic accident involving a paper cutter; a suicide attempt; and her decision to ultimately relinquish a conventional life.

Colorful, crass, and profound, TOAD is Katherine Dunn’s ode to her time as a student at Reed College, filled with the same keen observations, taboo-shirking verve, and singular characters that made Geek Love a cult classic. Through the perceptive Sally, a fish out of water among a cadre of eccentric, privileged young people, we meet Sam, an unwashed collector of other people’s stories; Carlotta, a free spirit who nevertheless fails to escape the deception of marriage; and Rennel, a shallow, self-obsessed philosophy student. With sly self-deprecation and mordant wit, Sally recounts their misadventures, up to the tragedy that tore them apart.

Through it all, TOAD demonstrates Dunn’s genius for black humor and irony, her ecstatic celebration of the grotesque. Daring and bizarre, TOAD is a brilliant precursor to the book that would make Dunn a misfit hero—even fifty-some years after it was written, it’s a refreshing take on the lives of young outsiders treading the delicate lines between isolation and freedom, love and insanity, hatred and friendship.

THE LINDBERGH NANNY by Mariah Fredericks
ISBN 9781250827401 | on sale 11/15/22

Betty Gow is known by another name: the Lindbergh Nanny. When toddler Charles Lindbergh Jr. is kidnapped from his parents’ weekend home in Hopewell, New Jersey in 1932, his parents are frantic, his grandmother devastated, and the media rabid. Betty, amid the maelstrom and named a suspect herself, is determined to find out who has taken him.

Charles Lindbergh was already famous for his flight across the Atlantic—the golden boy of America, with his wealthy and lovely wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, beside him—when Betty joined the household to look after little Charlie. A Scottish immigrant deciphering the rules of her new homeland and its East Coast elite, Betty finds Col. Lindbergh eccentric and often odd, Mrs. Lindbergh kind yet nervous, and Charlie simply a darling. Far from home and bruised from a love affair gone horribly wrong, Betty finds comfort in caring for the child, and warms to the attentions of handsome sailor Henrik, sometimes known as Red.

But when Charlie is taken from the family home, at a time when no one but a handful of Lindbergh servants could have known he was there, everything changes. A suspect in the eyes of both the media and public herself, Betty must find the truth in order to clear her own name—and to find justice for the child she loves.

BLACK SKINHEAD: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future by Brandi Collins-Dexter
ISBN 9781250824073 | on sale 9/20/22

Brandi Collins-Dexter had spent her career fighting for racial justice, progressive politics, and the Democratic party. And so in the aftermath of the 2016 election, questions swirled in Brandi’s mind. How had it come to this? And, most pressing, Who had voted for him?

Many white voters, as we now know. But talking with loved ones, Brandi began to notice something baffling: dozens of them, all Black, had also voted for Trump. Brandi was shocked. She had always assumed that Black Americans would vote Democrat–an alliance she had long taken for granted.

Thus began the origins of BLACK SKINHEAD, as Brandi realized she needed to reconsider every assumption she had about Black political identity. In this eye-opening book, Brandi dives headfirst into the growing phenomenon of Black voters moving away from the Democratic party, embarking on a strange and unexpected journey to understand them. It’s a journey that takes her through niche subcultures, dark corners of the internet, and even Kanye West, and leads Brandi to uncover what she deems the Black Skinhead: disillusioned, Black outsiders in politics and culture who have turned from the political party they feel has failed them. It’s a journey that flips all of Brandi’s assumptions and eventually leads her to reconsider her own politics, history, and relationship to Blackness.

In BLACK SKINHEAD, through essays that span the political, cultural, and deeply personal, Brandi seeks to understand the fraying bonds between Black voters and the Democratic party, ultimately painting a portrait of decades of Black disillusionment that can be mapped as much through hip hop lyrics as it can through voting statistics.

TREASURE STATE by C.J. Box
ISBN 9781250766960 | on sale 9/27/22

Investigator Cassie Dewell–now the lead character in this year’s most sensational TV crime show, Big Sky, from Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley–is headed to Anaconda, Montana, in search of a slippery con man who has disappeared somewhere in the “treasure state”. A wealthy California divorcee has accused him of absconding with her entire fortune, and wants Cassie to find him and get it back. But Anaconda, a quirky former copper mining town, is the perfect place to reinvent yourself, and as the case develops, Cassie begins to wonder if her client is telling her everything. Between searching for the con man and a second case, that of a rumored buried treasure somewhere in the vicinity that has led to a cutthroat competition among adventure-seeking treasure-hunters, Cassie has her hands full.

C. J. Box’s newest Cassie Dewell novel, the highly anticipated follow-up to THE BITTERROOTS, is full of more twists and turns than the switchbacks through the Anaconda Range.